"We don’t want to just train technicians -- we want to train healers,” Alan Shelton, the clinical director for the tribe's authority, told McClatchy News. “And the way we train healers is we connect them to the Native American community and they learn about ideas of wellness and spirituality. And when they connect with patients, they connect with them on a deep level.”

The Puyallup Tribe was the first in Indian Country to utlize program.
The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma is the second and more tribes could join if Congress authorizes an extension.

"[W]e’re actually training doctors in rural settings or tribal settings so that they will then be employed there, where we have the highest need,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), who has introduced the Community-Based Medical Education Act to keep the program running through 2019, told McClatchy.